Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World [Adapted for Young People]

Tracy Kidder is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the author of the best sellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, Among Schoolchildren, and Home Town. He has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the "master of the non-fiction narrative". This powerful and inspiring new book shows how one person can make a difference, as Kidder tells the true story of a gifted man who is in love with the world and has set out to do all he can to cure it.

Haiti After the Earthquake

On January 12, 2010, a major earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people died, and the greater part of the capital was demolished. Dr. Paul Farmer, U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, who had worked in the country for nearly thirty years treating infectious diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS, and former President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, had just begun to work on an extensive development plan to improve living conditions in Haiti.

Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we've waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos.

Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgetting

Tracy Kidder, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of the best sellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, and the enduring classic Mountains Beyond Mountains, has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the "master of the non-fiction narrative". In this new book, Kidder gives us the superb story of a hero for our time. Strength in What Remains is a wonderfully written, inspiring account of one man's remarkable American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him.

A Truck Full of Money: One Man's Quest to Recover from Great Success

Tracy Kidder, the "master of the nonfiction narrative" (The Baltimore Sun) and author of the best-selling classic The Soul of a New Machine, now tells the story of Paul English, a kinetic and unconventional inventor and entrepreneur who as a boy rebelled against authority. Growing up in working-class Boston, English discovered a medium for his talents the first time he saw a computer.

The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster

On January 12, 2010, the deadliest earthquake in the history of the Western Hemisphere struck the nation least prepared to handle one. Jonathan M. Katz, the only full-time American news correspondent in Haiti, was inside his house when it buckled along with hundreds of thousands of others. In this visceral first-hand account, Katz takes readers inside the terror of that day, the devastation visited on ordinary Haitians, and through the monumental--yet misbegotten--rescue effort that followed.

At the age of 36, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

Atul Gawande explores how doctors strive for best performance in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. His stories of diligence and ingenuity take us to battlefield surgical tents in Iraq, to labor and delivery rooms in Boston, to a polio outbreak in India, and to malpractice courtrooms around the country. He discusses the ethical dilemmas of doctors' participation in lethal injections, examines the influence of money on medicine, and recounts the astoundingly contentious history of hand washing.

The House of God

By turns heartbreaking, hilarious, and utterly human, The House of God is a mesmerizing and provocative journey that takes us into the lives of Roy Basch and five of his fellow interns at the most renowned teaching hospital in the country.

Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (Issues of Our Time)

Anthony Appiah's landmark work, featured on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, challenges the separatist doctrines espoused in books like Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations. Reviving the ancient philosophy of "cosmopolitanism", a school of thought that dates to the Cynics of the fourth century BC, Appiah traces its influence on the ethical legacies of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit.

What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

In What Doctors Feel, Dr. Danielle Ofri has taken on the task of dissecting the hidden emotional responses of doctors, and how these directly influence patients. How do the stresses of medical life - from paperwork to grueling hours to lawsuits to facing death - affect the medical care that doctors can offer their patients? Digging deep into the lives of doctors, Ofri examines the daunting range of emotions - shame, anger, empathy, frustration, hope, pride, occasionally despair, and sometimes even love - that permeate the contemporary doctor-patient connection.

I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish---now known simply as the "Gaza doctor"---captured hearts and headlines around the world in the aftermath of horrific tragedy: On January 16, 2009, Israeli shells hit his home in the Gaza Strip, killing three of his daughters and his niece. By turns inspiring and heartbreaking, hopeful and horrifying, I Shall Not Hate is Abuelaish's account of an extraordinary life.

A Fine Balance

In the India of the mid-1970s, Indira Gandhi's government has just come to power. It institutionalizes corruption and arbitrary force, most oppressive to the poorest and weakest people under its sway. Against this backdrop, in an unnamed city by the sea, four people struggle to survive. Dina, Maneck, and two tailors, the Untouchables Om and Ishvar, who are sewing in Dina's service, undergo a series of reversals.

Miracle on Voodoo Mountain: A Young Woman's Remarkable Story of Pushing Back the Darkness for the Children of Haiti

"It took months of God waking me up in the middle of the night before I realized I was the one He was calling to leave my comfortable American life and move to Haiti." Miracle on Voodoo Mountain is the inspirational memoir of an accomplished and driven 24-year-old who quit her job, sold everything, and moved to Haiti, by herself - all without a clear plan of action. Megan Boudreaux had visited Haiti on a few humanitarian trips but each trip multiplied the sense that someone needed to address the devastation.

Cutting for Stone: A Novel

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother's death in childbirth and their father's disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics - their passion for the same woman - that will tear them apart.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

An old Chinese proverb says "Women hold up half the sky." Then why do the women of Africa and Asia persistently suffer human rights abuses? Continuing their focus on humanitarian issues, journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn take us to Africa and Asia, where many women live in profoundly dire circumstances.

Publisher's Summary

Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy Kidder introduces us to a remarkable man who tackles some of the world's most frightening medical and social problems through principled actions. Harvard Medical School graduate and MacArthur "genius" fellow Paul Farmer spent much of his med school years in Haiti, where he created a health care system and clinic in one of the most grindingly poor places in the world. Owning only one suit and living part of each year in a house without hot water, he travels widely and takes a global approach to the interaction between politics, wealth, social problems, and disease. Farmer makes a difference quietly, using his intellectual gifts and his charisma to further his philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity."

What the Critics Say

"Many readers have come to expect that anything authored by Kidder...will be of high merit." (Library Journal) "[This book] is inspiring, disturbing, daring, and completely absorbing." (The New York Times Book Review) "A gifted storyteller, Mr. Kidder is able to explain the web of circumstances that contribute to the wretched conditions of the world's poor." (The New York Times) "Paul Michael captures the book's mix of intensity and elaboration beautifully....Just the right amount of edge-of-your-seat passion....A very good rendition of an important book." (AudioFile)

I wish that I could rate this book twice. The first half of the book describes Dr. Farmer's childhood, the life choices he made and the strongly held beliefs that have guided him in his service to the poor. This first half gets 5 out of 5 stars.
The second half is a current view of Dr. Farmer's day to day schedule. The writer follows Dr. Farmer as he travels between clinics in Central America, Peru, Russia and elswhere while engaging the Doctor in philosophical arguments about healthcare funding and politics. This second half gets 4 out of 5 stars.

Since becoming a member of Audible over a year and a half ago, I can say without reservation that this is the best, most compelling, and most inspiring book I've read. The narration is stellar, a must for my Audible choices. But the story itself draws you in, and you can't stop reading as you follow the humble beginnings of Partners in Health, its unique founder, Dr. Paul Farmer, and the impact a small group of highly-movtivated and committed individuals has made on world health. There are many miles to go yet in the journey of Partners in Health. By reading this book, you will want to join them.

I wish that John McPhee had written this book, but I guess I am being greedy. At 72 I suppose McPhee could not have kept up with Paul Farmer well enough to do him justice. This stunning account of Dr. Farmers' work with the worlds sick and poor(the two seem to be synonymous) moved me more deeply than I could have imagined. Be prepared to sell your house and car and move to Central America.

The subject of this book, Dr. Paul Farmer and his work with the poor in Haiti (and other places), are interesting, moving, and enlightening. The writer does a good job of asking the hard questions that the reader wants to have asked, while maintaining a basically sympathetic approach. The narration is very well done-you forget you're listening to a professional voice actor. You only hear the author, an old Haitian woman, or a Russian doctor. You'll learn some things from this book. Can one person make a difference? Read this one and find out.

I flew throught his book. Not only was it educational and thought-provoking, it was wonderful story of a ture role model in world health reform. As a doctor, it inspired me to think more globally and to listen intently to my patients and their families.

I loved the book, including the narration. I've long enjoyed Tracy Kidder's work and this is every bit as good as his others. Along with the important, dramatic, amazing story of Dr. Farmer's work and life, I especially enjoyed the way Mr. Kidder captures Dr. Farmer's inventive use of words and his quirky shorthand language and acronyms. I was sorry when the book ended but grateful for the way it cut through my cynicism about what one person can do.

Reminds me of Bobby Kennedy's statement which I believe is: "Some see things as they are and wonder why. I see things that never were and wonder why not?" Paul Farmer seems to follow that in his daily life--he is a saint! He could be a wealthy Boston doctor, but instead chooses to spend his time fighting poverty and abysmal health care in Haiti and around the world. His story is fascinating, his impact immeasurable. Very inspiring tale, along the lines of Three Cups of Tea. A must for your audio bookshelf.

A physician forsakes wealth, fame and love to do what he feels is right: bring medicine to the poorest of the poor. This is an amazing story of true altruism. This is the story of Dr. Farmer, a physician trained at Harvard, who spends every free moment while at school to treat people that could live if they only had a doctor or some medicine. His thought is always of what can he do to save lives and mitigate suffering - and to hell with cost effectiveness. Farmer sees his patients as individuals. He treats their bodies and their spirits. He sees a problem and continues to work to solve it, despite the problems. This book had me continually questioning whether what I am doing is the right thing, or whether I should be working with Dr. Farmer to alleviate tuberculosis in Haiti or HIV in Peru. This is an amazing book about not only the actions, but also about the thoughts of a true humanitarian.

This story about Dr. Farmer is amazing. He is the most unselfish person we will probably ever know, giving 100% of himself 100% of the time. The conditions in Haiti made me cry but Dr. Farmer's commitment to making a difference is inspiring and uplifitng.
Reading this book will change how you think about what you are doing with your life. It made me wonder why we spend so much money on things we really don't need, things that don't really make us better people or help others in any meaningful way. It can't help but make you examine your life in a different perspective.